The NDAA and the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans

NDAA & Incarceration of Japanese Americans

The 2012 NDAA authorizes the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, including American citizens on U.S. soil, without a warrant or due process if the military simply suspects them of supporting terrorism. This is exactly what the U.S government did in 1942 to 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, and who spent years in prisons without notice of charges, the right to an attorney, or the right to a trial.

The amicus brief filed by the families of Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi describes a terrifying parallel to the incarceration of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Under the pretense of national security, the NDAA essentially repeats the decisions in the discredited World War II cases of Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui, allowing the government to imprison people without any due process rights for an indefinite time.

These potential infringements on the constitutional rights of citizens and residents doom us to repeat history and subverts what should have been lessons learned from the wartime imprisonment.